Mitigation

26 April 2009: The 30th session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was held from 21-23 April 2009, in Antalya, Turkey, with approximately 320 participants in attendance. The Panel focused mainly on the scoping process for the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) with a view to providing guidance to climate change experts who will define the outline of the report during the scoping meeting scheduled to take place July 2009.

24 April 2009: The Indigenous People's Global Summit on Climate Change, hosted by the Inuit Circumpolar Council, convened from 20-24 April 2009, in Anchorage, Alaska. The Summit was supported by the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII), the UN University (UNU), the Northern Forum and other international organizations, and attracted nearly 500 indigenous representatives, from 5,000 distinct indigenous groups across 80 nations, to discuss how to integrate indigenous views, policies, traditional values and visions into the global response to the challenges of climate change.

24 April 2009: Speaking at the Tsunami Lessons Learned event, which took place in New York, US, on 24 April 2009, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stressed the importance of sharing lessons learned from disaster responses.

23 April 2009: The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and UN Global Compact hosted the Business for the Environment (B4E) summit, which took place from 22-23 April 2009, in Paris, France. In their closing manifesto, the over 400 delegates underscored that agreement on a new climate regime is crucial, with recovery from the current economic turmoil requiring investments in clean technologies and sustainable infrastructure systems.

23 April 2009: The UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) has convened for its 65th session in Bangkok, Thailand, from 23-29 April 2009, under the theme of “Sustainable agriculture and food security in Asia and the Pacific.”

27 April 2009: The Joint World Bank Group (WBG) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) Development Committee met on 26 April in Washington, DC, US, and highlighted that “hard earned progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is now in jeopardy.”

22 April 2009: The World Bank's World Development Indicators 2009, released during the Bretton Woods Institutions Spring Meetings, includes an environment section that reviews evidence on energy use, climate change and the prospects for cleaner energy.

20 April 2009: The International Training Centre (ITC) of the International Labour Organization (ILO) has launched a six week open course on Green Jobs, focusing on the socioeconomic impacts of climate change with particular attention to the world of work, in terms adaptation and mitigation, and on how to manage the transition to a low-carbon economy.

22 April 2009: The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has released the fourth issue of its FoodClimate newsletter, which contains interviews, updates and notes on upcoming events on climate change relating to agriculture, fisheries and forestry. The feature story, an interview with members of a livelihood adaptation to climate change project in Bangladesh, focuses on technology transfer, actor involvement and other prerequisites for and obstacles to community adaptation.

22 April 2009: The 21st meeting of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Committee on Agriculture, taking place from 22-25 April 2009, in Rome, Italy, is addressing, among other issues, the role of agricultural production in adapting to climate change and mitigation. The Committee will consider challenges arising from the need for adaptation and mitigation in agriculture, as well as from increased demand for biofuels.